FedRAMP Security Controls From Atomicorp
Continue to meet FedRAMP security control requirements, amid uncertainty, with Atomicorp NIST 800-171 compliance solutions.
The U.S. Federal Risk and Authorization Management Program (FedRAMP) codifies and standardizes the security required by cloud service providers in protecting federal unclassified information. FedRAMP security controls define the standards by which federal agencies and third-party assessors measure and assess a cloud service provider’s ability to meet FedRAMP requirements, from low, to moderate, to high-level certification. These requirements extend across 12 security control families and hundreds of individual controls.
FedRAMP was designed to reduce duplication, inconsistencies, and inefficiencies related to multiple standards. FedRAMP standardizes security control requirements for the authorization and ongoing cybersecurity of cloud services in accordance with NIST 800-53, NIST 800-171, FISMA, OMB Circular A-130, and FedRAMP policy. Cloud service providers seeking FedRAMP authorization must be sponsored by a federal agency.
FedRAMP’s exact future in 2025 has become untellable as the program undergoes reorganization, but meeting FedRAMP security control requirements is still required of cloud service providers handling federal unclassified data, many of these requirements standardized by NIST 800-53 and NIST 800-171.
FedRAMP: Bumps in the Road
Established by the U.S. Office of Management and Budget (OMB) in 2011, FedRAMP was updated in the Federal Information Security Modernization Act (FISMA), 2014, 113-283, and the program has both flexed and gotten pushback during its lifetime. For example, industry resistance was a factor in an SBOM requirement package falling off the Fiscal Year (FY) 2023 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA), which would have made the recommended but still nascent SBOM technology a FedRAMP security requirement.
FedRAMP is jointly governed by the FedRAMP Board—formerly the Joint Authorization Board (JAB)—plus the OMB, and the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST). Typical accreditation time for an authorized FedRAMP contractor can take between 12 and 18 months for those who apply for assessment and go through the testing and authorization program.
The current U.S. administration in 2025 has hinted it would work to shorten the FedRAMP application process to three months, while the General Services Administration (GSA), which oversees Technology Transformation Services (TTS), is reducing the number of GSA and TTS employees and federal contractors who support FedRAMP.
What Security Controls Does FedRAMP Require?
FedRAMP extends federal information system and data protection requirements to cloud service providers. It overlaps with many NIST 800-53 and NIST 800-171 standards and security controls in that many of the security control families and individual requirements are common between the NIST and FedRAMP programs. These common families (or domains) include access control, awareness and training, audit and accountability, configuration management, contingency planning, incident response, identification and authentication, system and information integrity, risk assessment, and supply chain risk management, as well as controls for physical and environmental protection, and personnel security.
FedRAMP Security Controls From Atomicorp
Meet FedRAMP security controls addressable by software with Atomic OSSEC from Atomicorp. Request a demo, or read on—
Access Control
The Atomicorp Atomic OSSEC detection and response system provides agented and private cloud administrative controls engineered according to least-privilege principles in adherence with zero trust principles and NIST 800-53 and NIST 800-171 guidelines. This enables you to harden and restrict access at computing endpoints, to software systems and APIs, files, accounts, and individual workflows. A dashboard GUI eases management of accounts, groups, alerts, and reporting.
Identification and Authentication
Be able to manage user identities on devices with the foundation of Atomic OSSEC system agents and a hub. For asset inventory, we can discover and identify users of servers and laptops, and the operating system and applications they are using. Atomic OSSEC supports multifactor authentication (MFA) and single sign-on (SSO) through integration with open-source Keycloak SSO and identity and access management (IAM), APIs for commercial IAM such as Google Authenticator, and MFA partners such as YubiKey.
Configuration Management
Atomic OSSEC comes with a least-privilege baseline configuration. Access settings are configured to give system users access to the least amount of functionality and privileges. Exceptions for additional privileges are governed by defense-in-depth system controls, such as intrusion prevention, MFA integration, and additional secure access control configurations. We also track changes to configurations and audit them for compliance.
System and Information Integrity
Atomic OSSEC provides AV and antimalware, system behavioral monitoring, and defense-in-depth lateral movement protection and active response for both internal- and external-facing server networks. It has a vulnerability detector that can run daily and collect a software bill of materials (SBOM) from each monitored system. Atomic OSSEC’s leading FIM capability captures and analyzes change log details in real time, including “who” data. Each collected SIEM log is also analyzed for MITRE CVEs and other vulnerabilities. Atomic OSSEC further expands and sharpens your SIEM data through integrated global threat intelligence and threat advisories that enhance the machine learning system’s ability to recognize malware signatures and anomalous behavior.
Incident Response
The Atomic OSSEC detection and response engine integrates global threat data and machine learning to analyze code, file, and system health, and automatically isolate a threat and alert your organization to an incident in real time. Atomic OSSEC’s graphical user interface (GUI) and management dashboard makes incident monitoring and reporting for compliance and reporting easier, providing automated rules, management tools, priority incident lists, and graphical analysis such as pattern visualization.
Audit and Accountability
Atomic OSSEC provides rich auditing tools and process capabilities for meeting audit and accountability (AU) control requirements for NIST 800-171 and the more cloud-centric FedRAMP. These include nonrepudiation of users, event review, alerts related to process failure, audit information correlation, audit integrity assurance, audit information protection, and overall AU management. Audit a whole system against CIS-cross-referenced compliance benchmarks for NIST and PCI DSS and other standards.
Contingency Planning
With Atomic OSSEC, redundant and remote data backup occurs before and after every file change, providing a functional and compliant foundation for secure redundant storage, comprehensive data recovery, and additional contingency plan needs.
Awareness and Training
Atomicorp offers training and certification services that complement the automated controls in Atomic OSSEC software and professional support. Visit our Training and Services page. Our solution is also available in a SOC 2 MSSP offering. See our Partners page, or contact us to find out more.
Physical and Environmental Protection
FedRAMP focuses assessment on the security of the physical environment and protection from environmental hazards as well. Contact us about Atomic OSSEC private cloud data security standards, SaaS managed hub offerings, and SOC 2-certified managed security service provider (MSSP) partners.
Risk Assessment
Atomicorp provides a vulnerability and risk assessment and report. The vulnerability scanning in Atomic OSSEC works across major operating systems such as RHEL, Ubuntu, and Windows and can detect vulnerabilities on some legacy system versions of Linux and Windows. Atomic OSSEC also comes with AV, antimalware, MITRE CVE scanning and benchmarking, and malware memory analysis to reduce the risk of fileless malware. Crowdsourced and Atomicorp global threat intelligence, built-in active response, and data loss prevention (DLP) further reduce risk, inform response, and strengthen security stature.
Supply Chain Risk Management, and More
Whether it’s software from commercial vendors or the open source development community, the software supply chain has become a regular target for compromise and poses serious risk to your data, operations, and to critical infrastructure. Atomic OSSEC enables SBOM generation, which inventories software components. From there, Atomic OSSEC provides real-time file and system monitoring, including hash analysis, that you can run continuously to protect the integrity of data, code, and the interfaces in your software ecosystem.
Conclusion
Security controls from Atomicorp enable cloud service providers to check off many of the FedRAMP security controls (and NIST 800-171 requirements) that can be achieved through software, better preparing your organization for the assessment and authorization process.
Discover how Atomicorp can prepare you for your FedRAMP assessment and authorization.
Visit the Atomicorp compliance page for more or to read the NIST 800-171 data sheet.
Partner with us for industry, federal or global cloud compliance.